Product availability and large-scale deployments from Wi-Fi Alliance® members demonstrate Wi-Fi 6E readiness
Austin, TX – November 10, 2022 – Wi-Fi 6E is delivering value to users, enterprises, and service providers, and the 6 GHz band is satisfying growing demand for higher-bandwidth services and more immersive experiences. Since its introduction, Wi-Fi 6E has gained traction as the de-facto industry standard in products, and with healthcare, education, and sports and entertainment environments. There is immense market opportunity for Wi-Fi 6E, and decisions by regulators and policymakers around the world to open the entire 1200 MHz of spectrum in 6 GHz for Wi-Fi will have a significant impact on user experiences for students, employees, healthcare workers, researchers, and entrepreneurs in those countries. Enterprises deploying Wi-Fi 6E will also see a competitive advantage.
Wi-Fi is expected to contribute nearly $5 trillion USD to the global economy by 2025, and countries making the full band available for Wi-Fi will see greater socioeconomic benefits. Wi-Fi 6E will also play a major role in tomorrow’s innovations including Extended Reality (XR), sophisticated augmented reality applications, and even holographic collaboration solutions. Wi-Fi 6E will be a key ingredient to delivering the best user experience from these applications.
Wi-Fi 6E is seeing strong product, deployment, and regulatory momentum worldwide:
Products: a diverse and rapidly growing Wi-Fi 6E ecosystem
More than 660 Wi-Fi 6E devices have been Wi-Fi CERTIFIED by Wi-Fi Alliance®, and the diverse and rapidly growing Wi-Fi 6E ecosystem includes a wide variety of smart TVs, smart phones, enterprise and residential access points (APs), and laptops. APs are now available to support faster speeds, smoother streaming, and more reliable connections for enterprises and gamers alike; APs include those from NETGEAR delivering gigabit speeds and low latency for gamers, from Extreme Networks providing outdoor venue support with WPA3™ security, and from Aruba bringing optimized campus and classroom experiences coupled with Wi-Fi Location™ capabilities. Cisco introduced Wi-Fi 6E APs enabling greater capacity for 4K and 8K videoconferencing, greater bandwidth for XR, and enhanced industrial IoT capabilities. Mesh systems like the Google Nest Wi-Fi Pro and Eero Pro 6E are also seeing high-bandwidth, Wi-Fi 6E upgrades.
Marquee devices with Wi-Fi 6E support – including the Apple iPad Pro, Google Pixel 7 and 7 Pro, and Samsung Neo QLED 8K TVs – will transform Wi-Fi experiences for users around the world. Devices like the Meta Quest Pro will help optimize VR, offer opportunity for deeper collaboration, and give users early access to the metaverse.
Deployments: large-scale networks and service provider support
A series of large-scale deployments coupled with strong global service provider momentum demonstrate Wi-Fi 6E’s readiness in various environments.
Sports and entertainment
Recently, the Chase Center in San Francisco and home of the Golden State Warriors NBA team announced they will deploy Aruba Wi-Fi 6E APs so that more than 18,000 fans can take advantage of “increased capacity, wider channels, and significantly reduced signal interference of 6 GHz” when live streaming and uploading recorded content at games.
Education
The University of Michigan recently deployed the world’s largest Wi-Fi 6E education deployment, with more than 16,000 Wi-Fi 6E APs across two campuses to provide the “ability to move an enormous amount of data, the ability to have 400 or 500 students in a classroom potentially connected via Zoom, sharing their screens and recording movies and all the projects they need to do simultaneously,” according to Ravi Pendse.
Aruba also recently announced that over 250 educational institutions across K-12 and higher education are upgrading their network infrastructures with Wi-Fi 6E, signaling the level of reliance that education institutions have on delivering extraordinary campus and classroom experience. Another recent deployment trial at Polytechnic Institute of Viseu in Portugal – a collaboration between the university, Broadcom, Extreme Networks, Intel, and Samsung – successfully demonstrated 8K video feed for remote teaching with HD video, ensuring students can access and interact with resources without buffering or lag time.
Service provider
Recently, Swisscom – powered by SoftatHome – became the fifth service provider in Europe to launch Wi-Fi 6E services for their customers and help deliver the advanced connected home experiences. Service provider support for Wi-Fi 6E across Europe including Orange, Bouygues, Free, and Deutsche Glasfaser further signals the need for European regulators and policymakers to make the upper and lower bands available for Wi-Fi. U.S. and Canadian service providers including Comcast and Bell and Rogers are delivering Wi-Fi 6E home broadband to users across the United States. These global service providers deploying Wi-fi 6E are bringing faster upload and download speeds, a better experience with at-home content consumption, and laying the foundation for a range of new customer services.
Regulatory: greatest socioeconomic value from entire 1200 MHz
Some of the latest countries to allow Wi-Fi access in 6 GHz spectrum include Bahrain, Kenya, and New Zealand, and Wi-Fi Alliance maintains an up-to-date list of the countries enabling Wi-Fi 6E. Users are demanding superior Wi-Fi, and countries and regions making all 1200 MHz of spectrum available are helping ensure people can experience the full benefits of Wi-Fi 6E. In Europe, Vodafone conducted a study[1] of 4,000 people, showing that four in five households where someone works from home equated the importance of Wi-Fi access to that of electricity and gas. Making the full 1200 MHz of spectrum available, rather than only opening the lower portion (500 MHz) of the band to Wi-Fi, is critical to giving people the most opportunity to experience the full Wi-Fi 6E benefits from new products or large-scale deployments. In the U.S., the FCC recently took an important step to authorize 6 GHz standard power unlicensed operations, which will unlock the full potential of Wi-Fi 6E and future Wi-Fi® generations.
For more, please visit: https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-certified-6
Industry support for Wi-Fi 6E momentum
“At Airties, we are actively working with several broadband providers to launch Wi-Fi 6E in order to take advantage of its unprecedented capacity and benefits. A key advantage of Wi-Fi 6E is the ability to support more concurrently connected devices, which also places a greater obligation upon operators to manage both new and legacy devices. We’re honored that broadband providers are turning to Airties for their in-home connectivity management through our SaaS solution combining our Cloud platform, Smart Wi-Fi software, and Wi-Fi 6E extenders to help proactively manage, and enhance, the connectivity experience of their upcoming Wi-Fi 6E deployments.” – said Metin Taskin, CEO & CTO, Airties
“Aruba is seeing continued, strong demand for our Wi-Fi 6E solutions across all sectors of our customer base and tremendous progress on regulatory fronts internationally. There’s a lot to celebrate regarding Wi-Fi 6E, including the Golden State Warriors’ recent deployment of the first Wi-Fi 6E network at a live entertainment venue and the University of Michigan’s deployment of Wi-Fi 6E across their entire campus. The first live demonstration of an end-to-end Automatic Frequency Coordination system, in which we participated with the Communications and Information Technology Commission of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Federated Wireless, bodes well for the future of Standard Power operation in the 6 GHz band.” – said Stuart Strickland, Wireless CTO and Fellow at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
“The momentum for Wi-Fi 6E is unmistakable. Riding on the ever-growing need for faster wireless broadband in the last few years, Broadcom has shipped over 1.3 billion Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E products to date. As we look forward, 6 GHz Wi-Fi is a must for global Internet service providers seeking to deliver multi-gigabit broadband to their subscribers. Enterprises are also future-proofing their networks to enhance productivity and deliver next generation wireless services. It is, therefore, imperative for regulators to enable the entire 6 GHz band to keep pace with this demand.” – Vijay Nagarajan, VP of Marketing, Wireless Communications and Connectivity Division, Broadcom Inc.
“The ever-increasing demand for better and faster Wi-Fi connectivity in various industry verticals such as MDU (multi-dwelling units) and education, and the rapid adoption of Wi-Fi 6E by device manufacturers to meet this need via the newly opened 6 GHz band is driving a healthy demand for Wi-Fi 6E APs. Ruckus Networks Wi-Fi 6E Wi-Fi APs enable these industries to capitalize on this 6 GHz opportunity and take advantage of the dramatic capacity and performance increase and reduced interference in this newly opened spectrum.” – said Bart Giordano, SVP and GM of Ruckus Networks, CommScope
“Wi-Fi is the internet for most consumers and high-performance Wi-Fi is necessary to deliver multigigabit internet service that users are expecting. Wi-Fi 6E has improved Wi-Fi performance significantly by bringing the much-needed contiguous spectrum, extra capacity, and lower latency to Wi-Fi backhaul and device connectivity. We expect Wi-Fi 6E momentum to continue well into the 2026 for residential applications.” – said Tuncay Cil, Chief Strategy Officer, DZS
"Wi-Fi 6E raises the bar for wireless connectivity by offering 6 GHz connectivity for the first time. The availability of the 6 GHz spectrum superhighway for Wi-Fi is already driving a renaissance of innovation for new applications and services that require more bandwidth and less latency. This includes everything from immersive education platforms, to healthcare IoT devices critical for patient monitoring, or real-time supply chain and inventory tracking for manufacturers. This also enables enterprises to begin future-proofing their wireless networks today, as Wi-Fi 7 and all future generations of Wi-Fi will be built upon the 6 GHz spectrum foundation launched with Wi-Fi 6E.” – said David Coleman, Director of Wireless in the Office of the CTO, Extreme Networks
“Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E are quickly getting adopted globally and in India, a demand in change for wireless connectivity is forthcoming. GX is closely working with chipset vendors like Qualcomm to enhance its product capabilities and are now on track to look into future Wi-Fi standards.” – said Vipin Jeswani, Product Manager, GX Group
“The clean spectrum offered by Wi-Fi 6E improves user experiences for teleconferencing, video and audio streaming, webcams and cameras used for live-feeds, due to Wi-Fi 6E’s lower latency. Many of our customers are integrating Infineon Wi-Fi 6E products to take advantage of these benefits. Edge AI applications also require real-time blending of data sources requiring low-latency Wi-Fi. We collaborated with partners like NVIDIA to support our Wi-Fi 6E portfolio with the NVIDIA Jetson edge AI platform, reducing time-to-market for our customers.” – said Sivaram Trikutam, Vice President, Wi-Fi Product Line, Infineon
“Great Wi-Fi is essential for our converged connectivity needs at home, at work, at school, and on-the-go. Access to exclusive 6 GHz channels with Wi-Fi 6E enables improved entertainment, collaboration, and productivity experiences. Since early 2021, Intel® and Intel® Killer™ Wi-Fi 6E solutions have been shipping across numerous desktop PC motherboards, gaming PCs, and Intel® vPro® and Evo™ laptops. The Wi-Fi 6E ecosystem has seen impressive growth and we are looking forward to its continued momentum in the years to come.” – Eric A. McLaughlin, VP Client Computing Group & GM Wireless Solutions Group, Intel Corporation
“Adding the 6 GHz band to Wi-Fi 6 has been vital for improving aggregate network performance. This improvement is essential to meet the demand created by the ever-increasing number of connected devices. In 2023, it is estimated there will be approximately 214 million units of Customer Premises Equipment (CPE). Reduced latency, increased speeds, and improved reliability are the hallmarks of a better user experience with next-gen gaming, video conferencing, and VR/AR applications. Wi-Fi 6E delivers on its promise and MaxLinear delivers service providers a comprehensive and highly integrated CPE platform portfolio.” – Doron Tal, VP Broadband Access, MaxLinear
“The past few years have accelerated long-term consumer demand for faster, more reliable connectivity – a trend Wi-Fi 6E is perfectly suited to address solutions at all levels, including the enterprise. In anticipation this shift, we’ve been able to help our customers around the world deliver Wi-Fi 6E to the 6 GHz band for groundbreaking performance across multiple infrastructures enables smartphones, PC’s, augmented reality devices, access points, and routers that maximize spectrum utilization.” – said Rahul Patel, senior vice president and general manager, Connectivity, Cloud and Networking, Qualcomm Technologies
“The transition from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E has been happening at a very rapid pace. There has been a transformational change in consumer behavior, due to the recent pandemic and increasing number of Wi-Fi devices being added to networks, where customers now are looking for the best connectivity experience. This has accelerated the momentum of adopting this new Wi-Fi 6E technology. Furthermore, the world is opening the 6 GHz spectrum for use. With Silex product portfolio of Wi-Fi 6E connectivity products, OEM’s are well positioned to use Wi-Fi in this greenfield spectrum.” – said Keith Sugawara, President, Silex Technology America
About Wi-Fi Alliance® | www.wi-fi.org
Wi-Fi Alliance® is the worldwide network of companies that brings you Wi-Fi®. Members of our collaboration forum come together from across the Wi-Fi ecosystem with the shared vision to connect everyone and everything, everywhere, while providing the best possible user experience. Since 2000, Wi-Fi Alliance has completed more than 75,000 Wi-Fi certifications. The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ seal of approval designates products with proven interoperability, backward compatibility, and the highest industry-standard security protections in place. Today, Wi-Fi carries more than half of the internet’s traffic in an ever-expanding variety of applications. Wi-Fi Alliance continues to drive the adoption and evolution of Wi-Fi, which billions of people rely on every day.
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